Microcosmically, the Liver is the organ associated with the youth of spring and the flexibility of the wood element. It circulates our qi and emotions (also qi), cleanses the blood, and commands the Hun (“ethereal soul”). The Hun is known as the free and easy wanderer (which comes and goes from the body when/if we sleep long enough to dream at night). When we’re depressed, the Hun has often been knocked out of the body, needing some assistance getting back in, and maybe even being called back if it’s somewhere far from the person. This means supporting and soothing the Liver, nourishing the blood, and freeing any blocked emotions.

Somascopes (body based horoscopes)

Aries/Aries rising:

You’re at a very pivotal moment right now. The new moon’s conjunction to Jupiter in Pisces is heaven’s invitation to integrate any of the parts of you that have been split off, rejected, or denied the same space and acknowledgement that the rest of your body receives. Your ruling planet Mars happens to be conjoined with Pluto in Capricorn right now suggesting that the only way to accept this invitation is to welcome the feelings about yourself that still feel tangled or fuzzy. Being at the cutting edge of knowledge and pushing boundaries of what is possible is kind of your thing, but this lunar cycle is asking you to notice the amorphous peripheries in which your wisdom is wrapped within. This is territory of your slumber world and is exploration for your dream body.

What happens when we treat the body as a subject to be submitted? This inadvertently happens when the focus of medicine is on pathophysiology and not on what is normal (physiology). The answer is, we fight. Or we flee and avoid (purity culture). How many health campaigns can you think of that celebrate fighting diseases? We’re in a pandemic right now and for two years have been desperately trying to fight and flee from an evolving virus. This sounds like a hate post on medicine, but really it’s an observation of our response and reactions (because mostly we have been reacting) to the natural world and in some ways the delusions we create in seeking to embody our Mars energy through violence and domination. It’s a reflection on our views more than a criticism of people’s conditioned and circumstantial choices involving health and survival. This is more about orienting to the cultural bodies we’re living in rather than any individual healthcare provider or human caught in the currents of post industrialism and medical complexes.

Heartbreaks of Winter lead us back to Spring

Seasonally, Valentine’s happens during the late winter/early spring in the northern hemisphere (depending on which calendar you use). The qi of the environment begins to move in the direction of more sunlight and movement. Valentine’s Day invites us to cozy up and get intimate when we need that warmth from another person. Any heartbreaks of winter lead the qi back toward spring’s love and fertility. Though the last sign before the equinox/zodiacal new year, the weeks around the Sun’s ingress into Pisces is often the entry point for spring from the lunar month calendar. If Aquarian Valentine love leads to a conception of sorts, Pisces is the spiralic water/wind formation that we call an embryo, and Aries is the birth event, bursting with light and new life force.

For anyone unfamiliar with how sun sign horoscopes work, they’re written assuming the sun is placed in the first house which is known as the place symbolizing the body, the appearance, and what Carl Jung called the persona. This isn’t the case for many, but they often still resonate. Nonetheless, it makes more sense for people to read their rising sign (the sign coming up on the earth’s horizon at birth) and even the moon sign for anyone born at night. The three can give a fuller picture or one that resonates more. Horoscope means hour marker, but Somascopes makes sense when we consider the body and health are emphasized by that first house position which is where the horoscope comes to be. Interestingly writing Somascopes felt like a fulfilling and fresh (for me) approach. They might be here to stay. :)

In the culture and language of Chinese medicine, Guei (which means ghost), has an association with the Po spirit. The Po (corporeal spirit) is associated with the tender organ, the Lung. The breath is the manifestation of the body, and thus the Po spirit (associated with the metal element in Wu Xing theory) encourages embodiment. The Lung (and large intestine, which is the yang counterpart to the Lungs) is injured by too much grief and sadness (crying and depression disrupt our breathing patterns and thus our Qi). Chronic breathing issues, skin disorders, and bowel diseases are all examples of imbalance that can occur from unprocessed grief, sadness, and trauma.

There is a season for everything. Almost 2 years into a pandemic has revealed divisiveness and led to much loss. What good has come from anyone who’s dealt with major health issues or has fallen sick from COVID or other viruses? First I’m convinced that most don’t leave this period unscathed. Mental health *is* health (or lack of) and a majority have suffered on at least that end if not more. The opportunity in dealing with sickness is orienting back into your body. That’s not always pleasant. Sickness reminds us of that. Trauma does too. The body doesn’t always feel like a safe space, and a Scorpio new moon ruled by Mars in Scorpio might be a time to seek out your safety person, group, or dark hidey hole in order to titrate your way into your body, which you were born into. For those fortunate to have health restored, it is a chance to be more present, somatically (I’m using it as a word). The body’s memory of wellness re emerges and you can once again enjoy the basics, yet essentials, of sleep, clear breath, appetite, and hopefully proximity.

Now that Mercury is retrograde (Mercury, and the Moon, are associated with the nervous system) we’re being nudged to go inward and notice any disconnects between the body and mind. Mercury’s proximity to the earth and its slower pace suggests our cerebral tendencies are withdrawn. We might even find an anchor in a sitting and forgetting meditation practice.

Are there remnants of unresolved stress or trauma lingering in the nervous system? Like the Heart Shen, Mercury is an indicator of our mind/consciousness. What previous events led to gaps in our thinking and perception? What unfinished business awaits us? These are a few reflections that beckon responses meant to be integrated around the upcoming solar eclipse in Gemini on June 10.

The shifts that occurred after the birth of my son were tremendous and deep reaching. I still vividly remember one of the most significant turning points in the first year of his life when I was in a dark liminal space, referenced as my 12th house profection year from my sect light (natal moon). Holding my 20lb baby in my arms, I pulsed through squats (often for an hour or two at a time), standing in the bathroom of our one bedroom apartment, where it was quietest and darkest, trying to get him to sleep for nap or bedtime. I didn’t workout to snap back. My postpartum appearance was shaped out of exhaustion, sweat, tears, and being nourished by fast burning sugar and less sustainable sustenance, unfortunately. Looking good in a swimsuit does not equate healthy. Please remember that. We are not just meat suits with blood and bones, but so much more. My shen was parched and thirsty for the nourishment of sleep and consistent cooked meals.

Have you noticed or thought about that dark space that’s between waking, sleeping, and dreaming?

It’s the same dark space that’s between our birth and our earliest memories. Essentially, these are thresholds. Tibetan traditions call these gaps the bardo and we experience this in a quasi lucid sense during the eclipse seasons every year when significant shifts occur in our lives and we’re suspended in periods of waiting. Waiting, witnessing, rearranging, unlearning, and being swept up in change.

Not only are these dark spaces a threshold, they’re a subtle periodic pattern that essentially highlights what we don’t know. No one remembers their own birthing experience (of being born)... not in the cognitive sense... nor do we remember that unique feeling. Was it something we hoped for? Or was it a terrible mistake?

The Shen (when present) is the quality of a person that radiates. It’s the thing we can sense in a body we recognize as being human. We can see someone is “in there”. Conversely, when someone we live and care about does and we attend their funeral, we see the substance of the body, and we cry because we can still sense the Shen, floating nearby, which is no longer in that body we once knew. It’s not the corpse we miss, but the Shen we long for.

First and foremost, the Wu controlled the weather. Without the weather, we wouldn’t be here. There wouldn’t be any ancestors without the negotiation with earth spirits over the land and the crops that grew from them. Without those contracts in place, without the Wu, there’d be no us.

The roots of Chinese medicine and cosmology have millions of people and thousands of years of practice backing it up. And while overlooked, it’s the Wu who really helped that process along. Here we see Venus as ritual, invocation and union, healing, and magic in contrast to modern Mars medicine of cutting, separation, surgery, sterility, and the pursuit of an ideal or perfection.

“The strong pattern of female shamans in Eastern Asia has been erased from history that most people know. Yet women predominated in shamanism of ancient China, Japan, and Korea, and have been persisted into modern times in eastern Siberia, Korea, Manchuria, Okinawa, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.” MD

Your dream world is what allows the Hun to soar and integrate new inspiration each morning as you’re born anew with the rising of the sun. It’s relationship to circulation, space, and the dream body is why it’s called the free and easy wanderer. Visually oriented, the Hun’s presence (and nightly wandering) is key to cultivating a fluid relationship between the dream world and the wake world. This is very significant in the practice of Chinese medicine and cosmology. Cutting one off from the other distorts our perception of reality leading to a laundry list of imbalances and symptoms, including a disconnect from our capacity to interpret symbols. It is through symbols, imagery, sensations, and emotions that the body, and our ancestors, speak to us, so to write dreams (and sleep) off as unimportant and unreal is to be disoriented and out of touch with our full living experience.

To spend 1/3 of our lives sleeping is not a cumulative of wasteful events. It is a practice.

To think, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is good enough is to be poorly mistaken, because if at the time of transition there is not enough Qi, you won’t be able to pass. There is no such thing as catching up on sleep later. Lost sleep is an act of borrowing Qi from the future. And contrary to the linear concept of death being a sudden flat line, humans need Qi to pass over. When a person transitions successfully, it is because there was more Qi on the other side for them. But without that, when someone’s condition is being artificially sustained with drugs or with oxygen (for instance), it creates the possibility of a person becoming a ghost. (Liu Ming)

So when we remember that Qi is also time and that a person is born of a given hour, in which they take their first breath—consolidating heaven and earth Qi— they officially inherit a natal chart, which comes with promises, images, opportunities, challenges, and all that their relatives passed down (the Yuan Qi/original Qi or ancestral Qi).

From this perspective, we’re acknowledging that we are karma— not that we simply have it or create it. We are of our ancestors and all of their predispositions (including to health, sickness, talents, and habits) and this is the image of the natal chart.

There’s typically an assumption, even if unspoken or unexpressed during the session, that these periods of time that call for more compassion and gentleness— times when we’re called to cultivate wisdom and fortitude, for instance—are inherently experiences that are not open to enjoyment. That’s simply not true and a very limited view on the idea of appreciation and enjoyment. From a Chinese medicine perspective, we should be able to enjoy all the emotions to an extent because this makes us whole, healthy human beings. To be over inspired, excited, or happy can disorganize or slow the Qi too much just like too much crying could scatter it and too much anger to stagnate.

It’s one of the reasons why I’m intentional about the words I choose. Words have limitations, but they certainly matter and carry a lot of weight.

In Chinese, Wu is translated as a number of words. A few relevant to this series include: Five (wǔ), as in five spirits or elements, shaman (wū), and dance (wǔ), which is also symbolic m the context of the five elements/spirits.

In this series, I’ll write about the context of healing through Chinese medicine and what it means to be supporting the continuity of humanity and helping people maintain or return to their sense of being human. That’s quite a feat living in today’s sped up and fragmented world, though I hope to offer inspiration and maybe some clarity when you think about health, healing, medicine, humanity, and what you’re doing here.

People who study or practice astrology, particularly from a western perspective, have long associated the planet Mars with the blood, war, knives, soldiers, cutting, and separation. Mars has also been given an association to medicine, and that’s what I want to reflect on in this post.

Why does the planet that has to do with battle, blade, and blood have such a relation to medicine?

Is it the blood part?

That’s a small part of it, actually.

First we should consider what the view of medicine has been to understand why Mars has been given rule rulership over it.